the different planet people

past notes I found that still totally apply…was written some years ago when I was a mail clerk:

This morning at the Capital Station post office building, there was some uptight blond woman in a suit fussing about some random person who “always gets to park in the 15-minute zone”. She was doing that thing where bitching is dressed as polite inquiry: “Excuse me…Hi!…I was just wondering…there’s this person that parks every day in the 15-minute zone, and I was wondering how they got that privilege?” Asking as though she just wants to know who to ask for that privilege, when really it’s just a way of bitching about some stranger’s action. She was really all over it, though, becoming less polite and more forceful, like by some damned pre-worked formula, giving the rent-a-cops at the desk a real hard time until they agreed to go harass some hapless shit. I just found myself thinking “man, what an incredible amount of effort to go to for somebody else’s actions which in no way directly affect your life…” _So What_ some shit parks in the 15-minute zone. Big deal. Go on with your day. Is this really something worth that kind of effort? To even bother to be bothered by it seems like a lot to me. Must be exhausting to just walk around like that. I mean…people are doing their own strange shit all the time — are these people bothered by it all?

Saturday at the public pool I passed some guy giving the pay attendant a hard time because “people really shouldn’t be splashing around like that, and you guys really need to be doing something about it! If you have any questions, you can mail me or call the [blah-blah-blah]…” Again, this guy was just all over it. I thought laying in the sun, or swimming is exhausting enough — this guy’s got enough energy to spare to just spout off about stupid shit to some disinterested clerk. It’s a public pool, there are kids, kids splash. ooo-ahhh-wow…that’s something to get up such effort about?

I’m not sure if ‘easy going’ or `apathetic’ really applies to me, maybe they are one in the same …but good gods these people are freaks of a different planet altogether, as far as I’m concerned. Which is really not much, all in all. LOL It’s just something I see and think “huh — wow“. Sometimes feeling like maybe I should leave them a dollar, as though they’re a zoo display of some sort.